Ft. Bragg Stories Podcast

This year, after more than a decade of service as a linguist and a paratrooper, Jay Huwieler made the decision to leave the military. “It was a combination of feeling like I’d served my purpose, and at the same time feeling like there had been too many times when I was too far away from my wife,” he said. Huwieler recalled his sergeant major telling him: “One day you’re not going to be in the Army. When it’s over, there needs to be a family there because you didn’t leave them behind.” He came to see his own experience echoed that of past generations of service members who translated what they learned in the military into valuable skills in the civilian world. “I think what that ends up meaning is you don’t have to make a career out of it in order for that experience to be useful and fruitful for the rest of your life,” Huwieler said. “I felt like it was okay say I don’t have to stay all 33 years. It’s okay to do your part, to give, in my case, more than a decade of my life to my

Jeremy Moore was on a night patrol in Afghanistan in 2012 when he fell nearly 60 feet down an open well. He suffered serious injuries to his legs, spine, and head. He returned to Fort Bragg, determined to stay in the Army and keep working, even while he recovered from trauma that made routine activities difficult.

Military service is the thread that weaves Bobby and Alexia Fields’ family life together. He’s on active duty at Fort Bragg, she serves in the Army Reserve. Together, they balance the demands of the Army with the responsibility of raising three young children.

From 1942 until 1978, women who wanted to join the Army served in the Women’s Army Corps. Former Specialist Victoria Landes spent six years as a WAC during the 1960s, training to be a dental assistant at Fort Bragg. “When I graduated at 18, I really didn’t have any significant plans,” said Landes. “Going to college really wasn’t going to be an option.”

As a young man in the late 1960s, Hal Noyes faced the prospect of being drafted to fight in Vietnam. He was opposed to the war, but decided to enlist, hoping to avoid combat. By 1969, he found himself stationed at Fort Bragg, working in the s upply room in the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center. He and a group of fellow soldiers decided to join G.I.’s United Against the War in Vietnam and began publishing Bragg Briefs, which became one of the longest running G.I. anti-war newspapers of the Vietnam era. Noyes recalled it was both frightening and exhilarating to protest the war as an enlisted soldier. The activists handed out the paper at the PX and the Enlisted Men’s Club. When Army brass got word, Bragg Briefs was banned, but Noyes and his friends persisted, sneaking the publication into barracks and handing it out on Hay St. “We were trying to reach both other soldiers and the public at large to try to convince them the war was wrong,” he said. Noyes said many low-ranking soldiers

Growing up on his family’s farm in southern Alabama, Private First Class Tyler Dunn thought his future lay in agriculture. “Our family farm, we’ve got roughly 3,000 acres that we row crop, we have chicken houses, and we have close to 3,000 head of cattle,” he said. “We’re a fairly large operation compared to those around us. I started physical labor [on the farm] around eight years old. I just enjoyed being in the field with my grandad and my father.”

Lynn and Steve Newsom spent five years as co- directors of Fayetteville’s Quaker House. During their tenure, they advocated for better mental health care for incarcerated veterans, organizing a petition and vigil in A pril 2016 to draw attention to the plight of former Staff Sergeant Josh Eisenhauer . Eisenhauer was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder following two deployments to Afghanistan. When emergency responders came to a small fire at his Fayetteville apartment in 2012, Josh barricaded the door and shot at police and firefighters. He was shot multiple times. Waking in the hospital, Eisenhauer told his nurse he thought he was on a rooftop in Afghanistan. He was sentenced to serve up to 18 years in prison. Eisenhauer had a mental breakdown in prison. His supporters argued he was not receiving adequate treatment for his PTSD and lobbied successfully to transfer him to another facility. Lynn Newsom said the vigil was not only for Eisenhauer, but on behalf all incarcerated

Sergeant First Class Kelly Rodriguez deployed more than five times in the course of her 21-year military career, serving as an Army Combat Medic in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and twice in Afghanistan. She loved her work, but it exposed her to some of the worst realities of war.

Retired Major Ivan Castro’s life was forever changed September 2, 2006, when a mortar landed near him in Iraq. Two of the men in his unit were killed and Castro was gravely injured. The attack left him completely blind, facing a long road to recovery.

In 2008, Armando Nunez and a friend decided on a whim to try their hand at ghost-hunting by taking pictures in a local cemetery. His wife Joanna and friend Tom Kuntz soon joined in and together they founded the Paranormal Research Organization of Fayetteville, or PROOF.

Jean Wilson was a college freshman on October 22, 1962, when she heard President John F. Kennedy’s speech announcing the presence of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on the island of Cuba. “It sounded like an emergency, like a national emergency,” Wilson said.

Hundreds of soldiers aided in Hurricane Florence rescue and recovery efforts, even as some saw their own homes flooded or evacuated. Specialist Ruben Alvarez is a parachute rigger at Fort Bragg. During the storm, he volunteered to help evacuate houses, working long shifts with the 189th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion.

Specialist Jonathon Wannemacher is an infantryman in the 82nd Airborne. He’s also a skilled marksman. At age 26, he’s ranked as one of the top 100 competitive shooters in the country. He placed 81 out of roughly 1,200 shooters in the President’s Hundred Match, a national competition held this past July in Camp Perry, OH.

The Base Realignment and Closure process of 2005 shut down 24 military installations across the country and consolidated many more. Fort Bragg grew as a result, adding the U.S. Army Forces Command and U.S. Army Reserve Command.

Bob Dean was a twenty-year-old rising senior at Cornell in 1950. When the Korean War started that summer, he was training with his ROTC class at Fort Bragg. “I recall for the early part of the training, we had a heck of a good time,” said Dean, now 88. “We did not take it seriously.” Dean was learning the basics of artillery leadership, including aerial observation. He was delighted to be the first in his class selected to go up in a small plane over the ranges to practice adjusting artillery fire from the air. It was his very first plane ride. Holding a map on his lap, Dean and his pilot circled the ranges. “I looked left, I looked right, and about this point I realized I wasn’t made for airplane flight,” said Dean. “I wasn’t feeling well at all.” Moments later, he threw up all over the map, bringing the flight to a premature end. Back at the barracks, his peers were eager to hear about his adventure. “All my friends were there saying, ‘How was it? Was it wonderful?’ I said, ‘It sure

Growing up on Fort Bragg as the son of an active duty service member, Josh Groll saw the military installation as his home, a small town insulated from the rest of the world.

In the fall of 2001, Shelli Altopp-Miller was living with her husband and two small children at Pope Air Force Base. He was on active duty with the Air Force, she was a stay-at-home mother.

Steve Newsom and his wife Lynn spent five years as co-directors of Quaker House, the Fayetteville nonprofit that advocates for peace and supports service members who question their role in the military. As a young man growing up New Jersey, Steve thought he might spend his entire adult career in the military, joining the Navy in 1972.

Mary Ellen Shugart served two tours as an Army nurse in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 70s. She treated hundreds of soldiers, but the memory of one young man at Fort Bragg stayed with her through the years. She recalled treating a soldier in the ICU and Recovery Ward at Womack Army Hospital in 1966. Injured in Vietnam, he’d been flown back to the U.S. for treatment for an abdominal wound.

Bill Reid is 92 now, but back in 1944 he was just 18 when he was drafted to fight in World War II . He traveled by train from New Jerse y to Fort Bragg for 17 weeks of training before heading off to Europe . On his first day at Bragg, Reid recalled he was not impressed with his initial assignment. "W hen I asked what kind of outfit it was that we were being trained for, they said, 'O h, C ooks and B akers school,' " he said . " Well, that doesn’t sit very well with a gung- ho hero." He s witched to artillery, learning how to dig-in, aim, load and fire a 105 mm Howitzer. In January of 1945, Reid boarded a ship headed for Italy, where he spent seven months. By August , the war in Europe was over , but Reid and his fellow soldiers still faced the prospect of fighting on the Pa cific front. On August 15, 1945, Reid and 5,000 other GI s packed into a hangar near Naples to see a show starring the iconic singing trio the Andrews S isters. The show was interru pted by someone carrying a note.